Abstract
Before we can begin to discuss security, we really have to define some key terms and concepts. You do not have to memorize this stuff, and it’s okay if you don’t follow everything here. But for the rest of this book to make sense, I need to get you up to speed on the basics of how computers and the Internet work. I’ve thrown in some fun little tidbits that will help to keep things interesting. There will be a wide range of people reading this book, and I just can’t take the time to fully explain everything. But in this chapter, I’ll give you a solid base to work from.
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Notes
- 1.
One of the best books on how computers work for the layman is Code by Charles Petzold. I was fortunate enough to interview him on my podcast: https://www.charlespetzold.com/books/
- 2.
Okay, historically, the next largest grouping of bits is called a nibble; believe it or not. That’s 4 bits. No one uses this anymore.
- 3.
Almost. Because computers are so tied to binary counting, they count things based on the powers of 2. You frankly will probably never need to know this, but if some smart-ass tells you that 1KB is not really a thousand bytes, they’re right… it’s technically 1024 bytes. Why? Because. Just trust me. For most purposes, you can just call it a thousand and be done with it. The same is true for the others (MB, GB, TB)—just go with thousand, million, billion, and trillion. It’s close enough.
- 4.
The term Wi-Fi is just a marketing term someone made up. It was meant to sound like Hi-Fi but doesn’t really stand for “wireless fidelity.” It’s just a lot catchier than 802.11, which is the technical specification name.
- 5.
The class came from a fabulous New York-based outfit called the Tech Learning Collective. They specialize in teaching computer classes for nontechnical people, with a focus on practice skills. Their primary goal is teaching cyber self-defense to at-risk groups, but they welcome any and all students: https://techlearningcollective.com/
- 6.
The name has an even funnier origin. It’s named after a Viking king, Harald “Bluetooth”, who had a dead tooth that was blueish gray. The Bluetooth symbol is a juxtaposition of the Norse runes for “H” and “B”. https://brianklaas.substack.com/p/the-bluetooth-viking-and-the-scattered
- 7.
South Korean Internet service provider SK Broadband sued Netflix recently because the hit show Squid Game was so popular, their network was swamped trying to stream it. Netflix lost, but appeals are ongoing.
- 8.
Image source: Histoire des jouets by Henry René d’Allemagne (1902).
- 9.
I’ll talk in Chapter 6 about how you can encrypt your hard drive to prevent someone from accessing your files if they were to steal your laptop or hard drive. However, encrypting your hard drive will not prevent ransomware… there’s nothing preventing a file from being encrypted twice!
- 10.
An acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. A Turing test, named for famed mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing, is a test that attempts to verify that you are communicating with a real human and not a computer.
- 11.
That’s a Wizard of Oz reference. We’re going to explicitly pay attention to the man behind the curtain.
- 12.
The “World Wide Web” is a subset of the broader Internet—but it’s the part we’re most familiar with.
- 13.
- 14.
Britain’s version of the NSA, which is called Government Communications Headquarters.
- 15.
By the way, cybersecurity professionals hate that Bitcoin bros have co-opted the term “crypto” to refer to cryptocurrency. Crypto is short for cryptography—don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
- 16.
This is my personal decoder pin, obtained from the A Christmas Story House and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio. If you’re a fan of the movie, it’s a must-see (https://www.achristmasstoryhouse.com)!
- 17.
As you can see in the figure, the actual decoder pin wasn’t a true rotational cipher. But I’ve simplified it here for the purposes of our example.
- 18.
Turing’s work has been wonderfully captured in the Academy Award-winning movie The Imitation Game. And if you find the history of cryptanalysis as fascinating as I do, I highly recommend you read The Code Book by Simon Singh.
- 19.
An algorithm is just a fancy name for a process or technique—a set of steps to complete a specific task.
- 20.
Benjamin Franklin famously said: three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
- 21.
Alice and Bob are well known in the cryptographic world. These are the names used when describing communication scenarios in lieu of saying “Party A” and “Party B.”
- 22.
I don’t know why it’s not HyperText or Hyper Text. And since it’s neither of those things, you’d think the abbreviation would be HTP not HTTP. But that’s the way it is.
- 23.
Note that HTTPS, by itself, does not say anything meaningful about the identity of the service you’re communicating with—only that the communications are private.
- 24.
Actually, there’s a push now to refer to this as a “manipulator” in the middle, to make it gender neutral.
- 25.
This provides something called nonrepudiation. That’s a fancy legal term that basically means Alice can’t plausibly deny that something digitally “signed” with her private key came from someone else.
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© 2023 Carey Parker
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Parker, C. (2023). Castle Guard Certification. In: Firewalls Don't Stop Dragons. Apress, Berkeley, CA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-9036-1_3
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